Tuesday, February 27, 2007

the larger the moon the greater its admonition and if I can I will try to put the blame on you badgering after her are the kind of people who say they either have or haven't changed either way she's not listening

must we admonish our youngest over the cold-cuts nanna sent over by impertinent courier after which they say to the child lay down and chew the salt lick from the belt betimes

yes something awful wonderfully horrible is pertaining to the clefting-down-diamond of exhausted-and-wrung-out-late-season part-mouldy-part-etched by brush-work-undergrowth and roughage-space

it was a blatant attempt to use up the extra and be happy happier happiest with none left then she was free to leave the card board prompters of this life in this town how they speak a bit of this calls to mind also a bit of that etc

the concern is is it going anywhere no it's a fuckin' cityscape generally definable by it's not moving laughingly she said if you don't eat that soon it will get warm

is it night-time again in acerbia chilly shooters in the red ant whose inner life is as specious as it seems the red ant is a bar by the way but also an actual ant and a state of being

there is look there is a simple explanation for all of this and after the murder didn't happen the police will want to know why they are always asking questions the police nothing seems to satisfy the police

and it isn't full there is no word for what it is except almost there little man almost there sweetums just around the next corner of absolute peril 'cross the rickety bridge aspan the clear river

blue bar jewel perhaps we can accuse the children of crimes they can't even conceive of yeah that's good then morning fell in the narrative and we knew where we were step over the chalk outline and tell papa all about

Monday, February 26, 2007

waked in rapture and once more we longer to have paris no this not-being-here isn’t it is all in the eyes I mean along with love being the haggard line of mild hills black is against the blue not because it is similar but because that’s what love and what love love gets

then again or sometimes it just happens this is myopia whereas we were previously mistaken in mistaking it for self-seeing visions it is very hard to consider over there as not the future is neither past nor some meta-thing position I know that

but try for your father’s sake to get along in the next three days while it lasts ‘cos it won’t always and in an instant to be gone leaving escarpments to scrape the foil off of this scratch card night

perhaps it is not relevant so I will speak of lonely trains and journeys taken looking for you as if a concept crossing beaches sideways which sang or didn’t usually and ones that tapped their feet making whoopee in their own goddamn way

yes life is no journey that’s for sure but oh no do not ask what is it one day I may just go right up there and let a tabby cat out of a silvery bag in manner so fluid so beguiling you as a whole might take it on as some version of a general truth

telling/ordering blintzes one some rue on some other ruse and but because is it all looking as if you mean it but only now and not really all as there is is left-overs which you missed them as he had to eat them transports of a war-child

thank jesusgod europe has only the one life left in the new three strikes and yer out morality where did I hear that the noise of shire horses gambolling on heavy turf perhaps is a little bit sodden a sense of it we wept into each other then

and there and did those feet and did we wail and we were sons of them those handsome mounties who keep going is the very image of a constancy of process shit came too soon the precious which is the essence

rising up against a shabby backdrop you chase out no but let me say to you such hirsute simplicities of our being even on this place rather than any other we could opt for stroking-it-as-being with still one more line to go oh no I’s closed

Sunday, February 25, 2007

made as if to run into complicity which might save us she holds his arm he holds her arm they hold their arms I guess so because they would not want to lose hold of them altogether

people passing down a street at nighttime their shadows bound to hold their feet against the hearsay of the moon which murmurs “nothing is necessary not even contingency” except and perhaps (no one has yet addressed the category of being-as-perhaps)

no more mishaps this is the real of real perchance our being guilty in the alley nor in the gully will you find my aspiration to join once more hung-over from the vision flouncing

like a labrador on the motorway slipway verge and I like the rest of me could not bear the verge cut up by rabbit feet and bled by mottled run-off so let this dis-taste be my complicity

a problem solved which is a pretty big challenge there can be no re-entry into reverie we are sure we wanted to get the hell out to there like insects hate the vortex which they are between are the planes

but if in rummaging mainly through it but also by rights about it then you commit to the purchase just because your nude eyes show that you know and that you want it and this you also want to know I think so

this time getting it wrong is all there is about them we could gang up together to eviscerate them with—observes the contradiction of the stomach shallow ocean

the sense of what the dark isn’t leans in heavily in this scene I forget to tell you all about it and that then turns out to be what I hate about narratives as poetry need not necessarily in any circumstance but it also can so we made it up so what?!

it passed like all eternities must pass and as couples pass out of theatres and cinemas into-outo suggestivity this is the holy word I gave you you have faded because a cure is dawning pity swift darkling we might yet blame before the golden beams burning

Line MeasureMeasure is any notable feature in a poem that is repeatable and whose repetitions and modifications have a rhythmical effect. Traditionally this has been restricted to the counting of stressed syllables within one line, which relegates the line to being the result of this choice. However, the line itself has measure, especially in free-verse, and contemporary poetry is rich in examples of line-measured poems.

The measure of the line can still be dictated by the words or syllables within it, for example poets like Ashbery, Schuyler, Silliman and Raworth composing poems based either on one or two words, or on a strict number of words per line. However, increasingly the visual appearance of the line and its rhythmical impact, what we call the graphematic side of the poem, has been foregrounded. Thus a poet might adopt the triadic foot of William Carlos Williams where the line is fragmented into three sections which move across and down the page like three steps. Rachel Blau duPlessis' Toll is one of the best recent examples of this as is Charles Bernstein's Parsing.

The important element of the line-measure is that it is a rhythmical effect of the line itself as a semiotic unit that is central and if one is going to count one must count lines rather than words or syllables. Line measure can operate in the following basic ways: -the line becomes reduced to the point where each word or mark is a line -the number of lines in the poem is controlled and extended over a sequence where this limitation produces a rhythm such as in my own "theseecstasies" where the measure is nine -the visual rhythm of lines in space is exploited -the line becomes extended to a point where it can neither be spoken out loud in one breath or held in the mind as a single semantic unit -a combination of features makes the line a part of the fabric of the poetic field or page at which juncture the measure of line becomes part of a visual, rhythmic interchange between marks and space in a visual field. The line-measure has a fundamental relationship with the importance of the line-break in contemporary poetic practice.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

After quite some time away from this blog I am now planning to revive it, partly because the blog actually seemed to gain some interest from people and partly because it is a good forum for me to discuss my ideas on poetry and also make available some of my own recent poetry.

I am also increasingly teaching a lot of experimental poetics and this will be a good place to post some of the notes and analyses this has led to that at present are only available to my undergraduate and postgraduate students.